Health Trotter

July 16, 2021 at 07:12PM Greenland dropped all plans for future oil exploration on environmental grounds, saying the price of extraction was “too high.” The island’s socialist-led government, in office since April, has made climate concerns central to its legislative program. While the decision to scrap planned exploration is a win for environmental groups, it cuts off potential investments that could have aided efforts to gain economic independence from Denmark. The government “has decided to cease issuing new licenses for oil and gas exploration,” it said in a statement . “This step has been taken for the sake of our nature, for the sake of our fisheries, for the sake of our tourism industry, and to focus our business on sustainable potentials.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Ten years ago, Greenland had become a hotspot for drillers as a commodity-price boom attracted not only oil explorers but miners of diamonds, iron, rare earths and other metals. But crude’s subse...

April 14, 2021 at 07:12PM This coming May, millions of people around the United States will have front-row seats to an extraordinary entomological event: Trillions of Brood X cicadas across 15 states will emerge almost synchronously after having spent the last 17 years underground. The males will take up elevated positions, each buzzing as loud as a lawnmower to attract females. After mating, the adult cicadas will die off en masse just about as quickly as they arrived—likely sometime in late June or July—while their offspring tunnel underground, not to emerge until 2038, when the dance will begin anew. Annual, or “dog day,” cicadas appear across the U.S. every summer, when their signature mating song becomes as much of the seasonal soundscape as a passing ice cream truck. But the cicadas taking center stage in this year’s event—distinctive for their black bodies and red eyes—are part of a periodical “brood” of the insects that emerge in predictable cycles of 13 or 17 years....